Category: News

Grazed from IT Jungle.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Long-time IBM i platform reseller and system integrator Key Information Systems is going into the data center co-location, connectivity, and cloud computing businesses after acquiring ISWest, a data center operator located in its neck of Southern California.

Key Info did not disclose the financial details of the acquisition, but Leif Morin, the company’s president, tells The Four Hundred that the opportunity to acquire the assets of ISWest and take on its team of data center operations experts was too good to pass up. Key has 55 employees and generates around $55 million per year from its reseller and consulting businesses, while ISWest has about 15 employees and generates around $15 million…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Editorial Staff.

In previous blog we introduced ‘Private PaaS‘ as a major segment that will drive overall Enterprise Cloud adoption. We touched on how Appscale enables a ‘Google in a Box’ for the PaaS segment, along with others like Apprenda and Cloudbees.

Openstack for the Enterprise

Another option is of course Openstack and despite the VMware CEO claiming it’s not for the enterprise, it’s more likely it will become extremely popular in this space.  Already Openstack is a vibrant vendor partner community, meaning that the core platform can be extended in many different ways, such as high availability, federation, and more, and so can be tailored for the many demanding requirements of large enterprise customers…

Grazed from New York Times.  Author: Quentin Hardy.

VMware is a 15-year-old tech company with a market capitalization of $36 billion. Next week, it will host 21,000 customers in San Francisco and will start to find out if that means it is young or old.  “It’s a statement of our success how quickly we’ve become mainstream,” said Pat Gelsinger, the company’s chief executive. Now, however, he says, “we’re at the crossroads.”

As what he calls “the last great company of the client-server generation,” VMware is going through much of the same transition to the world of cloud computing, big data, and mobility, that bedevils so many giants of the old tech world.  Uniquely, the company has a legitimate claim to have helped destroy the software world in which it started…

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: James Duval.

Cloud computing has for many years been like the Wild West of business IT – a vast, untapped wilderness full of possibilities for profit and adventure but still largely unpopulated. For the IT contractors who possessed the particular set of skills needed to traverse the cloud landscape, things have been pretty great for some time now. But the market for cloud services is changing rapidly and those original contractors are going to increasingly find themselves in the middle of a modern day gold rush where their skill set is no longer as unique as it was.

The dynamics of the cloud computing market are interesting in that together they form a classic example of a business technology where widespread understanding has lagged far behind technological innovation. As more and more businesses begin to come to terms with the fact that cloud computing is really just a set of tools that utilise a certain kind of computer network and third party hosting rather than a huge and unintelligible leap forward, the market rewards for contractors are going to start to diminish. Why is this? Well, to answer that we first need to look at why the market is currently so good for contractors…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Compare the Cloud, an independent cloud computing comparison, information, and advice website, today announces the launch of CloudPitch.me.  CloudPitch.me is a free online resource where Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) have the opportunity to pitch for your business’s cloud computing requirements. In 150 words or less, each service provider has to explain why their cloud solution or technology will solve a particular business problem better than their competitors. Visitors to the site then have the opportunity to ‘vote up’ pitches that resonate with them; and overall voting directly impacts the order of appearance of that provider.

The concept of the “150 word Cloud Pitch” was spawned from a Compare the Cloud blog written in March 2013 by Paul Bevan – a Bloor Research Analyst, who identified the need for service providers to “make the connection to their customer’s needs and aspirations” and to “articulate the benefits,” or face the prospect of disappearing into obscurity – even if their offering is technically superior…

Grazed from Business Solutions.  Author: Editorial Staff.

dinCloud, a cloud services provider that offers business provisioning in the cloud, recently announced that dinServer, its hosted virtual server offering, is now available to Ingram Micro Inc.’s North American channel partners via the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace. The expanded distribution agreement allows Ingram Micro to market, sell, and support dinServer to its growing base of cloud-focused channel partners, which includes VARs (Value Added Resellers), MSPs (Managed Service Providers), and SIs (Systems Integrators).

“dinCloud is helping channel partners transform the way companies use the cloud,” said Renee Bergeron, vice president of managed services and cloud computing, Ingram Micro North America. “dinCloud’s server is very complementary to the hosted desktop service from dinCloud that we currently offer to our growing base of channel partners.”…

Grazed from MidSize Insider.  Author: Shawn Drew.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the cloud was an obscure new technology that only a handful of companies were successfully leveraging, but things have truly come full circle. Cloud computing is now almost ubiquitous, and cloud adoption rates by both IT and the public continue to soar. But a small group of businesses are rethinking their cloud strategy and finding that sometimes the cloud just isn’t the right fit.

The Realities of the Cloud

The benefits of cloud computing are undeniable. But as more and more businesses adopt individual cloud solutions, some cracks are starting to appear in this new technology’s armor.  For scalability or elasticity, the cloud reigns supreme, but for businesses that have outgrown the need for constantly shifting IT power, it may not always be the most economical option. As Wired points out, once a company can accurately predict their computing needs, buying hardware at a discount often contrasts advantageously with a public cloud solution for reasons of economy…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthor Cole.

The enterprise is fast approaching a critical juncture in the development of virtual and cloud architectures – the point at which public, private and hybrid infrastructure starts to meld into a unified data architecture. But while the idea of a fully seamless environment in which applications and data can burst across internal and external infrastructure at will is still a little fuzzy, the fact remains that cloud computing will soon become the norm for the enterprise, rather than the exception. And that means the pressure is on to convert existing silo-based infrastructure into a private cloud.

Too bad we don’t have a magic pill to make it happen. Instead, enterprise executives are forced into a soup-to-nuts evaluation of existing infrastructure, followed by a detailed plan as to how they intend to convert it into something that is still largely undefined. Industry-wide, however, the knowledge base is steadily increasing, and a quick scan of what some early adopters have learned can make the cloud transition a lot easier for all…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Gary Hilson.

Aryaka officially launched its Cloud Network as-a-Service, which is aimed at simplifying access to public and private cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, Google Apps and Office 365. The Cloud Network is connected globally through a network of 25 data centers with multi-segment TCP optimization and integrated QoS. Like Aryaka’s WAN Optimization as-a-Service, the Network as-a-Service connects users to the geographically closest point-of-presence (POP), rather than the data center closest to the organization’s headquarters, in order to streamline user-to-application requests.

The new service makes use of the same underlying infrastructure as Aryaka’s WAN optimization, including TCP optimization, but does not include all of the application acceleration features. Aryaka said the Cloud Network is designed to help enterprises with distributed offices, which would normally have to traverse the public Internet to access services such as Office 365 or AWS at a single data center, and that more than 95% of the world’s enterprise business users are within 20 milliseconds from any of its POPs…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Convergent Communications now offers cloud computing services to improve the storage capacity and efficiency of businesses. The innovative Cloud Workspace reduces technology costs while allowing employees to access files and documents from anywhere. In addition, the Cloud Workspace improves data security and eliminates complex security challenges that business owners typically encounter.

“We are happy to offer this new technology that significantly improves the way businesses store information,” said Ian Breckenridge, General Manager at Convergent Communications. “Our approach is to provide innovative solutions to improve efficiency within businesses. The Cloud Workspace gives businesses new capabilities that increase productivity and security while decreasing expenses.”…